I dunno that carbon footprint is even the way to look at it. I’d imagine it’s not all that far off any other mass of people that size packed in that close. There’s a lot of driving to get there, flaming art projects, and generators. But there also a lot of “my camp runs off sunshine and LSD”. So it probably balances out.
But any time you pack that many people into a chunk of land it’s gonna have an impact. And while deserts don’t always have a lot of visible life or biodiversity they tend to be pretty sensitive places. There are desert areas where walking through the wrong patch of soil can cause permanent damage, throwing up even temporary structures can cause runaway erosion. Picking these pretty flowers can mean a particular plant doesn’t breed this decade or poking the wrong thing with a stick can lead to the release of more methane than all the farms in America put out in a year.
I’m sure the playa itself isn’t a particularly sensitive place or they wouldn’t have been given access. But your sending 50k+ people there on the regular. How are they getting there, are they staying put, what are they cutting through to get there. I’ve always figured it couldn’t be as benign as claimed, no matter how dedicated to packing their trash out they are.
Many years ago I used to go volunteer at the 80 acres off season. About 1/3 of my time was spent walking areas of the desert in a big line of people looking for any and all trash to pick up. Those are some long damn days in the sun. About 1/3 was doing construction and maintenance on the ranch. The remaining 1/3 of my time was all manner of fuckery, because, BRC.
But to your point. The BOrg is going year around just to make that one week everyone knows about happen relatively hitch free.
I have spent some time drinking with the locals. A very colorful interesting group of very off the grid sort of people. They had a really really hard time understanding why we cleaning at old BRC sites where the desert hard burped up some waste.
Time to move. Find a friendly IR that would be happy to host the event, preferably on dirt rather than corrosive dust. While the dust is part of the Thing for many, for those with disabilities or lung issues it is fairly exclusionary.
well, the big burns are things they can plan for, because they know ahead of time how big they are going to be. the ones other art pieces i am not sure if they know for sure how big they are in time to buy offsets ahead of time. i know there’s a site where you can purchase offsets for your camp based on number of members, etc., and our camp did that last year. but i’m not sure how widespread the effort is.
I haven’t seen any research concerning Burning Man, but in my opinion it could be accurately estimated from available data. I guess that the transportation would be the biggest problem. Even then transportation energy costs are reduced by carpooling, which typically doesn’t happen with daily commute.
Burning does seem ostentatious, but mostly because people don’t notice how energy-expensive daily life in a first world county is.
Funny poster from WWII-era US:
I think you hit the nail on the head. The timing is way too suspect. Some fatcat got pissed he wouldn’t be able to bring his gold-plated Winnebago with champagne in the radiator and a towed fishtank for fresh caviar, and he called his friend in Washington. This is EXACTLY what some spoiled-ass self-entitled 1%er would do.
Well spotted. If another one (BLM Burning Man environmental impact statement,) comes out in 2 weeks we’ll know they ordered a double. Too wonderful, the Alter Cattle Business are backing the Yeet camp, aiee!
I can imagine it is. It doesn’t seem that hospitable to me in general but I have a severe dislike of festivals. but in all honesty I have no idea what BLM stands for in this context.
